Tens of millions of acres of public lands and oceans are now leased to fossil fuel companies for climate-polluting oil, gas, coal, oil shale and tar sands extraction. And each quarter, federal agencies lease more acres to industry. But they rarely disclose the greenhouse gas pollution that will result.
We created this calculator so that the public—and public officials—can calculate those impacts. This tool allows anyone to estimate the potential lifecycle greenhouse gas pollution—the heat-trapping gasses that drive global warming--for user-specified volumes of oil, gas, coal, oil shale and tar sands.
To use this calculator, select from three emission factor scenarios (high, medium, and low) and two emission units (gigatons, or billions of tons, and tons). You can also select from several fossil fuel volume and equivalent heat energy units. Resultant potential greenhouse gas emission should be treated as approximate and conservative estimates. This calculator is based on models developed by scientists at EcoShift consulting; those models, and their three emissions scenarios reflected in the calculator, are described in this report.